PM Valls places French island in wrong ocean

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Just as he admitted he had made one serious "blunder" the French PM Manuel Valls went and made another, although this geography-based one was a little more embarrassing than scandalous.

After admitting that taking his sons to Berlin in the government jet was 'a blunder', France's Prime Minister Manuel Valls has slipped up again after his questionable geography skills placed the French island of Reunion on the wrong side of the world.

France's Socialist premier Valls courted controversy last week after he used a government jet to take his two sons to the Champions League final in Berlin.

"This is a lesson," Valls told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper on Sunday.

"It was a mistake, a blunder. I gave the impression to the French people that I had not devoted myself to them. I am sorry."

But just when it looked like it couldn't get any worse for the PM, he put his foot in it again over the weekend when he suggested the French island of Reunion was in the Pacific Ocean.

"Reunion - it's the main département, it's the main region overseas, it has 800,000 inhabitants, it's a major place in the Pacific," he told the Reunion 1ere station, in an interview that was replayed throughout Friday and Saturday.

While the PM's population estimate was close enough - the island boasts 840,000 - Reunion is actually in the Indian Ocean.

The journalist carrying out the interview managed to "save" Valls by correcting him subtly in the follow-up question, but French social media users were far less forgiving

In the tweets below, one user shares the popular Who Wants To Be A Millionaire meme suggesting Valls chose the wrong ocean, the other suggests that it "must be easy to lose your bearings when you take a private jet everywhere you travel".